Rouletabille Knows the Two Halves of the Murderer
Mademoiselle Stangerson had been for the second time almost murdered.
Unfortunately, she was in too weak a state to bear the severer injuries
of this second attack as well as she had those of the first. She had
received three wounds in the breast from the murderer’s knife, and she
lay long between life and death. Her strong physique, however, saved
her; but though she recovered physically it was found that her mind had
been affected. The slightest allusion to the terrible incident sent her
into delirium, and the arrest of Robert Darzac which followed on the
day following the tragic death of the keeper seemed to sink her fine
intelligence into complete melancholia.
Robert Darzac arrived at the château towards half-past nine. I saw him
hurrying through the park, his hair and clothes in disorder and his
face a deadly white. Rouletabille and I were looking out of a window in
the gallery. He saw us, and gave a despairing cry: “I’m too late!”
Rouletabille answered: “She lives!”
A minute later Darzac had gone into Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room and,
through the door, we could hear his heart-rending sobs.
* * * * *
“There’s a fate about this place!” groaned Rouletabille. “Some infernal
gods must be watching over the misfortunes of this family!—If I had not
been drugged, I should have saved Mademoiselle Stangerson. I should
have silenced him forever. And the keeper would not have been killed!”
* * * * *
Monsieur Darzac came in to speak with us. His distress was terrible.
Rouletabille told him everything: his preparations for Mademoiselle
Stangerson’s safety; his plans for either capturing or for disposing of
the assailant for ever; and how he would have succeeded had it not been
for the drugging.
“If only you had trusted me!” said the young man, in a low tone, “if
you had but begged Mademoiselle Stangerson to confide in me!—But, then,
everybody here distrusts everybody else, the daughter distrusts her
father, and even her lover. While you ask me to protect her she is
doing all she can to frustrate me. That was why I came on the scene too
late!”
At Monsieur Robert Darzac’s request Rouletabille described the whole
scene. Leaning on the wall, to prevent himself from falling, he had
made his way to Mademoiselle Stangerson’s room, while we were running
after the supposed murderer. The ante-room door was open and when he
entered he found Mademoiselle Stangerson lying partly thrown over the
desk. Her dressing-gown was dyed with the blood flowing from her bosom.
Still under the influence of the drug, he felt he was walking in a
horrible nightmare.
He went back to the gallery automatically, opened a window, shouted
his order to fire, and then returned to the room. He crossed the
deserted boudoir, entered the drawing-room, and tried to rouse Monsieur
Stangerson who was lying on a sofa. Monsieur Stangerson rose stupidly
and let himself be drawn by Rouletabille into the room where, on seeing
his daughter’s body, he uttered a heart-rending cry. Both united their
feeble strength and carried her to her bed.
On his way to rejoin us Rouletabille passed by the desk. On the floor,
near it, he saw a large packet. He knelt down and, finding the wrapper
loose, he examined it, and made out an enormous quantity of papers
and photographs. On one of the papers he read: “New differential
electroscopic condenser. Fundamental properties of substance
intermediary between ponderable matter and imponderable ether.” Strange
irony of fate that the professor’s precious papers should be restored
to him at the very time when an attempt was being made to deprive him
of his daughter’s life! What are papers worth to him now?
* * * * *
The morning following that awful night saw Monsieur de Marquet once
more at the château, with his Registrar and gendarmes. Of course we
were all questioned. Rouletabille and I had already agreed on what to
say. I kept back any information as to my being in the dark closet and
said nothing about the drugging. We did not wish to suggest in any way
that Mademoiselle Stangerson had been expecting her nocturnal visitor.
The poor woman might, perhaps, never recover, and it was none of our
business to lift the veil of a secret the preservation of which she had
paid for so dearly.
Arthur Rance told everybody, in a manner so natural that it astonished
me, that he had last seen the keeper towards eleven o’clock of that
fatal night. He had come for his valise he said, which he was to
take for him early next morning to the Saint-Michel station; and had
been kept out late running after poachers. Arthur Rance had, indeed,
intended to leave the château and, according to his habit, to walk to
the station.
Monsieur Stangerson confirmed what Rance had said, adding that he had
not asked Rance to dine with him because his friend had taken his
final leave of them both earlier in the evening. Monsieur Rance had
had tea served him in his room, because he had complained of a slight
indisposition.
Bernier testified, instructed by Rouletabille, that the keeper had
ordered him to meet at a spot near the oak grove, for the purpose of
looking out for poachers. Finding that the keeper did not keep his
appointment, he, Bernier, had gone in search of him. He had almost
arrived at the donjon, when he saw a figure running swiftly in a
direction opposite to him, towards the right wing of the château. He
heard revolver shots from behind the figure and saw Rouletabille at one
of the gallery windows. He heard Rouletabille call out to him to fire,
and he had fired. He believed he had killed the man until he learned,
after Rouletabille had uncovered the body, that the man had died from
a knife thrust. Who had given it he could not imagine. “Nobody could
have been near the spot without my seeing him.” When the examining
magistrate reminded him that the spot where the body was found was very
dark and that he himself had not been able to recognise the keeper
before firing, Daddy Bernier replied that neither had they seen the
other body; nor had they found it. In the narrow court where five
people were standing it would have been strange if the other body, had
it been there, could have escaped. The only door that opened into the
court was that of the keeper’s room, and that door was closed, and the
key of it was found in the keeper’s pocket.
However that might be, the examining magistrate did not pursue his
inquiry further in this direction. He was evidently convinced that we
had missed the man we were chasing and we had come upon the keeper’s
body in our chase. This matter of the keeper was another matter
entirely. He wanted to satisfy himself about that without any further
delay. Probably it chimed in with the conclusions he had already
arrived at as to the keeper and his intrigues with the wife of Mathieu
the landlord of the Donjon Inn. This Mathieu, later in the afternoon,
was arrested and taken to Corbeil in spite of his rheumatism. He had
been heard to threaten the keeper, and though no evidence against him
had been found at his inn, the evidence of carters who had heard the
threats was enough to justify his retention.
The examination had proceeded thus far when, to our surprise, Frédéric
Larsan returned to the château. He was accompanied by one of the
employés of the railway. At that moment Rance and I were in the
vestibule discussing Mathieu’s guilt or innocence, while Rouletabille
stood apart buried, apparently, in thought. The examining magistrate
and his Registrar were in the little green drawing-room, while Darzac
was with the doctor and Stangerson in the lady’s chamber. As Frédéric
Larsan entered the vestibule with the railway employé, Rouletabille and
I at once recognised him by the small blond beard. We exchanged meaning
glances. Larsan had himself announced to the examining magistrate by
the gendarme and entered with the railway servant as Daddy Jacques
came out. Some ten minutes went by during which Rouletabille appeared
extremely impatient. The door of the drawing-room was then opened and
we heard the magistrate calling to the gendarme who entered. Presently
he came out, mounted the stairs and, coming back shortly, went in to
the magistrate and said:—
“Monsieur,—Monsieur Robert Darzac will not come!”
“What! Not come!” cried Monsieur de Marquet.
“He says he cannot leave Mademoiselle Stangerson in her present state.”
“Very well,” said Monsieur de Marquet; “then we’ll go to him.”
Monsieur de Marquet and the gendarme mounted the stairs. He made a sign
to Larsan and the railway employé to follow. Rouletabille and I went
along too.
On reaching the door of Mademoiselle Stangerson’s chamber, Monsieur de
Marquet knocked. A chambermaid appeared. It was Sylvia, with her hair
all in disorder and consternation showing on her face.
“Is Monsieur Stangerson within?” asked the magistrate.
“Yes, Monsieur.”
“Tell him that I wish to speak with him.”
Stangerson came out. His appearance was wretched in the extreme.
“What do you want?” he demanded of the magistrate. “May I not be left
in peace, Monsieur?”
“Monsieur,” said the magistrate, “it is absolutely necessary that I
should see Monsieur Darzac at once. If you cannot induce him to come, I
shall be compelled to use the help of the law.”
The professor made no reply. He looked at us all like a man being led
to execution, and then went back into the room.
Almost immediately after Monsieur Robert Darzac came out. He was very
pale. He looked at us and, his eyes falling on the railway servant, his
features stiffened and he could hardly repress a groan.
We were all much moved by the appearance of the man. We felt that what
was about to happen would decide the fate of Monsieur Robert Darzac.
Frédéric Larsan’s face alone was radiant, showing a joy as of a dog
that had at last got its prey.
Pointing to the railway servant, Monsieur de Marquet said to Monsieur
Darzac:
“Do you recognise this man, Monsieur?”
“I do,” said Monsieur Darzac, in a tone which he vainly tried to make
firm. “He is an employé at the station at Epinay-sur-Orge.”
“This young man,” went on Monsieur de Marquet, “affirms that he saw you
get off the train at Epinay-sur-Orge—”
“That night,” said Monsieur Darzac, interrupting, “at half-past ten—it
is quite true.”
An interval of silence followed.
“Monsieur Darzac,” the magistrate went on in a tone of deep emotion,
“Monsieur Darzac, what were you doing that night, at Epinay-sur-Orge—at
that time?”
Monsieur Darzac remained silent, simply closing his eyes.
“Monsieur Darzac,” insisted Monsieur de Marquet, “can you tell me how
you employed your time, that night?”
Monsieur Darzac opened his eyes. He seemed to have recovered his
self-control.
“No, Monsieur.”
“Think, Monsieur! for, if you persist in your strange refusal, I shall
be under the painful necessity of keeping you at my disposition.”
“I refuse.”
“Monsieur Darzac!—in the name of the law, I arrest you!”
The magistrate had no sooner pronounced the words than I saw
Rouletabille move quickly towards Monsieur Darzac. He would certainly
have spoken to him, but Darzac, by a gesture, held him off. As the
gendarme approached his prisoner, a despairing cry rang through the
room:—
“Robert!—Robert!”
We recognised the voice of Mademoiselle Stangerson. We all shuddered.
Larsan himself turned pale. Monsieur Darzac, in response to the cry,
had flown back into the room.
The magistrate, the gendarme, and Larsan followed closely after.
Rouletabille and I remained on the threshold. It was a heart-breaking
sight that met our eyes. Mademoiselle Stangerson, with a face of
deathly pallor, had risen on her bed, in spite of the restraining
efforts of two doctors and her father. She was holding out her
trembling arms towards Robert Darzac on whom Larsan and the gendarme
had laid hands. Her distended eyes saw—she understood—her lips seemed
to form a word, but nobody made it out; and she fell back insensible.
Monsieur Darzac was hurried out of the room and placed in the vestibule
to wait for the vehicle Larsan had gone to fetch. We were all overcome
by emotion and even Monsieur de Marquet had tears in his eyes.
Rouletabille took advantage of the opportunity to say to Monsieur
Darzac:—
“Are you going to put in any defense?”
“No!” replied the prisoner.
“Very well, then I will, Monsieur.”
“You cannot do it,” said the unhappy man with a faint smile.
“I can—and I will.”
Rouletabille’s voice had in it a strange strength and confidence.
“I can do it, Monsieur Robert Darzac, because I know more than you do!”
“Come! Come!” murmured Darzac, almost angrily.
“Have no fear! I shall know only what will benefit you.”
“You must know _nothing_, young man, if you want me to be grateful.”
Rouletabille shook his head, going close up to Darzac.
“Listen to what I am about to say,” he said in a low tone, “and let
it give you confidence. You do not know the name of the murderer.
Mademoiselle Stangerson knows it; but only half of it; but _I_ know his
two halves; _I_ know the whole man!”
Robert Darzac opened his eyes, with a look that showed he had not
understood a word of what Rouletabille had said to him. At that
moment the conveyance arrived, driven by Frédéric Larsan. Darzac and
the gendarme entered it, Larsan remaining on the driver’s seat. The
prisoner was taken to Corbeil.